I wonder if they are gonna get any of the other actors from LOTR to come back for the Hobbit? I know Gandalf is practically a shoe-in, since Ian McKellan said he would love to play him again. I'd love to see Ian Holm reprise Bilbo, but he might be a bit too old unfortunately. How about Legolas, Elrond, Gimli? Elves are immortal, so it would make sense for Legolas to be alive, and if I am not mistaken, Elrond WAS in the 70s cartoon version of Hobbit, so I'd love to see Hugo Weaving come back to reprise the role. I imagine dwarves live a long time, so Gimli COULD come back, or if not, then I know Balin (Gimli's cousin) was in the 70s Hobbit, so we could technically get John Rhys-Davies to play a dwarf again--if not Gimli, then he could play Balin (just with slightly different make up but keeping the "family resemblance"). Also the Hobbit takes place 60 years before LOTR (according to the caption in the beginning of Fellowship Of The Ring), and in the Special Edition Extended LOTR DVD, Aragorn mentions he is 87 years old, which would make him 27 at the time of Hobbit, so maybe Aragorn could be in this movie as well. I know a lot of this is definitely wishful thinking on my part, but I think if we could incorporate as much of the LOTR cast as possible, it would really help to make the Peter Jackson retelling of the Hobbit a great movie!
On a side note, I do have my suspicions on Guillermo del Toro directing the Hobbit, but then again, perhaps if he and Peter Jackson collaborate together on it similar to how George Lucas and Steven Spielberg collaborated for the Indiana Jones movies, then there's hope yet.